Shigeo Shingō

Shigeo Shingō (1909-1990) was a Japanese industrial engineer who was heavily involved in the development of the Toyota Production System (TPS), specifically tools such as SMED, Poka-Yoke and Zero Quality Control (ZQC).

Shingo earned his degree as an industrial engineer from Yamanashi Technical College in 1930, then worked for the Taipei Railway Factory. During World War II, he was sent by the government to the Amano manufacturing plant in Yokohama. As production manager, he increased productivity by 100%. In 1945, he started working at the Japan Management Association (JMA) as a consultant, focused on the improvement of factory management.

Shingo’s interaction with Toyota started in 1955 when an engineer from the car manufacturer went to see Shingo give a lecture. When he reported to Taiichi Ohno about the seminar, he decided to bring him to speak and work at Toyota, according to an interview with Isao “Ike” Kato, a manager at the time with Toyota. He helped train manufacturing engineers on implementing the efficiency processes with his P-course, that influenced Toyota’s later creation of kaizen.

Shingō may well be known better in the West than in Japan, as a result of his meeting Norman Bodek, an American entrepreneur, publisher, and founder of Productivity Inc.

In 1981, Bodek traveled to Japan to learn about the Toyota Production System, coming across books by Shingō, based on the Production Course (P-Course) he started teaching in 1947 to thousands of people in Japan.

In 1988, the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University created the Shingō Prize for Operational Excellence that recognizes world-class, lean organizations and operational excellence.